Workplaces across the country are talking about returning to the office, returning to the pre-pandemic way of working, returning to the way it used to be. There is a range of reasons why many leaders are eager to return, from nostalgia to productivity paranoia.
However, when Future Forum surveyed 10,766 full-time desk workers across the U.S., Australia, France, Germany, Japan, and the U.K., we learned that most desk workers simply don’t want to return to a system that was not built for them. In fact, 80% of employees say they don’t want to work from the office five days a week. And this sentiment is playing out in major trends like the she-cession, the YOLO movement, and the Great Resignation.
Our research suggests that, over the past three years, flexible work has offered many bright spots: Employees of color report feeling a stronger sense of belonging when working flexibly, both mothers and fathers say they prefer flexibility (a positive step in eliminating the mommy track), and remote and hybrid workers are 52% more likely to say their company culture has improved over the past two years.
But the unfortunate reality is that, while I’m doing laundry between meetings, one of my coworkers is in the office rubbing elbows with the big boss. While I’m driving my elderly parent to the doctor, a coworker in the conference room is raising his hand for the next opportunity. As millions of workers embracing newfound freedoms in how we work, we’re also being forced to wonder: “What are we sacrificing?”
Proximity bias, or favoritism toward employees who are in the office, is nothing new—it’s always been a part of workplace culture. Being “first in, last to leave” and working around the clock has long been a hallmark of performance. Throughout my career, I’ve seen people promoted for their perceived work ethic: hours spent in the office, on the road, or away from their families. And more often than not, those people up for promotion to senior leadership ranks are not women, employees of color, or working moms. Proximity bias is one reason why the corporate executive bench is often homogeneous.
Even after nearly three years of upending traditional norms of work, many executives continue to subscribe to Jack Welch’s philosophy: “The road to the top is paved with being there.”
And while nearly a third of executives cite proximity bias as a top concern around flexible work, there’s a clear age gap in those who are worried about it. Executives over the age of 50 rank proximity bias last among their concerns around work, behind coordination, productivity, learning, culture, and innovation. Given that the average age of a Fortune 500 CEO is 57, it’s clear that proximity bias may not get the concern it deserves. And unless actively managed, it will continue to derail workers’ professional mobility.
To recruit and retain diverse talent, leaders need to minimize the risk of proximity bias and jettison measuring performance based on how often someone is in the office. Here are a few ways where they can start.
Set behavioral guardrails
Workplaces where employees have the freedom to come and go into the office whenever they please is primed for proximity bias. But top-down policies that force workers to all follow strict rules about when they must be in the office and that assume that work is “one size fits all” across teams is not the solution—it’s a recipe for resistance.
The most successful executives set general guardrails and then empower managers to figure out what works best for their teams. This allows for each team to decide what works best for them and gives employees a better chance of being heard.
Behavioral guardrails, such as “if one dials in, all dial in”—meaning everyone joins virtual meetings online, even those together in a conference room—can prevent double standards from developing across employee groups.
Train managers to focus on outcomes
Instead, managers should be taught how to focus on the outcomes that their teams are producing, rather than the number of hours they’re spending in the office or how quickly they respond to emails.
We have found that over 40% of desk workers constantly feel the need to show their managers and colleagues that they are working. This kind of over-presentism is not only an ineffective way to measure productivity, but it can lead to burnout.
Teams can combat proximity bias by shifting promotion conversations from “Jack is the model employee because he is quick to respond” to “Jill exceeded revenue targets three quarters in a row.”
Simply put, performance measurement should be objective and transparent.
Recognize that it’s time to move forward
We may be experiencing the biggest workplace paradigm shift in our lifetimes. It’s time for leaders to embrace the change. It may be difficult but there is a huge opportunity: More engaged employees lead to more productive outcomes. At the end of this great work experiment, the companies that don’t embrace this change could be overtaken, or worse: become obsolete.
When I was pregnant with my first child, I was passed up for a promotion with the rationale that I wouldn’t be able to “take early morning calls or stay late for meetings in the office with a baby.”
Needless to say, I didn’t return to that job after my maternity leave and never looked back. The belief that we need to spend the majority of our adult lives around our coworkers to show that we are “good enough” is antiquated. And that belief is derailing the careers of too many talented humans.
People have moved on. We want a workplace that treats us like humans, not resources. And to stay relevant in this economic downturn, it’s time for leaders to fix the system for all employees, rather than returning to what worked best for them.
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